I’ve been hangry so often over my 40+ years on earth that I kind of built it into my identity. My mother often recounted never being without a zip-lock back of almonds to soothe my childhood hunger tantrums. Most of my friends know that I snack often and, if you’ve spent the night with me, you know that I want food immediately upon waking. Don’t even get me started on pregnancy...
I had mostly resigned to this being my (very fortunate) life: always be close to food, never attempt the fasting fads and don’t hold yourself responsible for what was said during hunger. Okay, maybe not the last one, but basically all the signs of having low blood sugar have been present since childhood. It took a blood chemistry conference speaker talking about “metabolic flexibility’ that peaked my interest in learning more. We hear a lot about how to intervene is high blood glucose situations, but not a lot is said for my fellow low blood sugar family - it’s mostly “eat smaller more frequent meals and focus on protein.” This man spoke about challenging yourself to go longer between meals so food didn’t hold you hostage and you had a greater flexibility in life that wasn’t oriented solely around the next snack time.
Feeling emboldened, I munched on my snack, and decided to order a continuous glucose monitor to gather more data. I also had been wanting to try one so that I could speak in an educated way about them to clients and have a first hand experience to share.
The most reasonable option (price and investigation wise) seemed to be the 3 month program. It came with 30 days of support with a nutritionist with an option to keep them on (for an extra fee). Each glucose monitor lasts 2 weeks, which means you have to reinsert (painless prick) the device onto the back of your arm every 2 weeks. I swapped arms but you don’t have to. I also figured out by the 3rd monitor, that the cover they give you sometimes messed with the sensor so I stopped putting it on. I also realized if you go on a beach vacay you will get a glucose monitor tan line, so that’s cool I guess...
I set out with no real intention other than curiosity and found the ramp up process relatively simple - you download the app and then follow the instructions on the monitor (don’t get impatient and think it’s not working right away as each monitor takes about 60 minutes to calibrate). You do need to scan it every 8 hours to keep a continuous read and you do that by holding the camera area of your phone (back side) against the glucose monitor on your arm and it vibrates or dings. You also need to log your meals/snacks/drinks/activities which is a little tedious for a gal like me that loathes food journals and tracking anything I’m doing. But, I’ll do a lot of things I dislike for science.
There were no big food surprises other than chocolate didn’t really spike my blood sugar (yay me). Fried food tended to spike it the most as did carbs (e.g. breakfast sandwich on a biscuit). Breakfast tacos were blissfully deemed healthy for my body and I have the beautiful confirmation that I do indeed tend toward low blood sugar and now have a medical pass for any future hangry episodes (sadly my nutritionist did not write me an excuse note for this). The thing that DID surprise me most was that the sauna temporarily caused a spike in my blood sugar levels. I know that this can happen with exercise since the body releases more glucose into the blood stream for extra fuel, but I did not anticipate this with the infrared sauna. Upon further research, it seems that infrared sauna sessions increase certain hormones (e.g. human growth hormone) which inhibit insulin which then increases the amount of glucose in the blood stream. I’m still pretty fascinated by this and definitely want to hear more of your experiences if you decide to try out a continuous glucose monitor.
love,
Jenna